Yeah, the marketing version of "inclusiveness":

"We are a great, hip and youthfull place to work: just look at *picture of male model with a hipster beard* Joe from Accounting"

(Reminds me of how since about first Tech boom, Tech companies would show to the Press and prospective candidates all the amazing facilities they have for employees to relax - fuzzball tables, relax-spaces with beanbag chairs, even indoor slides - but if you're on the inside you quickly find out you're expected to work 12h/day on a never ending sequence of death marches and you'll never actually have time to use those "relax facilities")

This kind of thing is the result of about the same process as their businesswise evaluation of complying with regulations: they usually conclude that the profit maximizing option is to provide the appearence of complying whilst internally and through less explicit methods (usually all in choices that aren't explicitly justified) acting in a completelly different way.

If there is one thing companies have learned in the last 4 decades is that image managements is way cheaper (read: "profit enhancing") than actually doing the right things and delivers pretty much the same results if in influencing those external to the company.

One can trust a corporation about as much as one can trust a known sociopath.

McDonalds does it on purpose to give work to the "technicians" that service the machines. They're bogus simple issues like overfilling that lock the machine down until they use their service tool to clear it. Great doc by Johnny Harris if you have 30min to kill

What they’ve actually done is given her an opportunity to start conversations about the pink hair.

Keen insight. I wouldn't have known she exists otherwise.

They’re probably conservative dickheads.

Hah! It doesn't even take that. All you need is a middle-management who doesn't support the rights of their workforce, is inconvenienced should a customer gin up complaints about OP's hair-color (whatever it is), and is generally just lazy and indifferent, learning from upper mgmt that growth & profits are 99% the things that count, followed by limiting liability situations. The workers themselves are just an inconvenient expense in the equation.

Yes, so they could discriminate her based on her looks sooner?

Probably not, in a previous job my hair (wig or real) had to be a "natural" colour.

A job shouldn't force you to modify your body in any capacity

She seems to be obeying the dress code now. And it doesn't sound like she's whining to me.

Well, at least you're sure

These expectations are the problem, if I agreed to sell my soul because I didn't want to read a several page agreement while installing a free program, should they get it? Fuck no. Also, as somebody who's worked all sorts of different positions: these rules are unenforceable, in a lot of cases. If a business hires you, they will try to keep that asset. A lot of times managers do not care what you wear until you're someone they don't like. Especially if you work in food service, and make a standard industry wage (that is, not shit!!) Push that envelope. Your coworkers will too, maybe.

She wanted attention and proved she'll do anything to get it.